Inventors, Innovators - improvements for Arborist

To everyone who helped make the HAAS successful by giving it a try
thank you. its really humbling.

I wanted to post an update, as many of you were really instrumental in this product. Just Sunday I was able to launch a website devoted to the HAAS.

www.haastreegear.com

and currently there are guys using the HAAS in sar sprat, caving and various other recreational and occupational rope access activities all over the world. An idea that came out of arboriculture has the potential to change the way other rope access is done, that is cool.

thank you guys.

Michael
 
Hi Michael - the HAAS was an impulse purchase at Expo resulting from Bonner at the TreeStuff booth telling me: "you gotta try this"! (Am pleased he did).
Your website looks good.

Cheers,
Dave
 
Hey Mike, I tried to pm you on Treebuzz but not sure it went through. Check your description on the short system, it says "you boot" probably should be " your boot".

Double check your "Contact" form also, I could not find a way to send it after I typed the above comment.

Sorry to bring up your dirty laundry in public, lol.

I hear it is a great product and one of these days I will get it off my wish list and in my cart, lol. Good luck.

Edited because I am not perfect either
grin.gif

And yet a second edit
crazy.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
I have been wanting to start this thread for some time and today I get to open it on a upbeat note.

Sherrill tree is now carrying X-Rigging Rings. They are the original, real deal XRR not some cheaply made knock off. They are giving David Driver his due for bringing them to our industry. Kudos to Sherrill tree for doing the right thing.

I think it is important for us in the industry to expect and demand that the credit and the profit potential for any invention or innovation goes to the developer of same. More on this to follow....

[/ QUOTE ]

Merle, you wanted to know about the ups and downs of bringing a product to the arborist world.

It is definitely a roller coaster ride, that is for sure.

(BTW, Sherrill has been awesome thus far, despite me being scared of them originally due to other people's comments in the past. New catalog is out and they did a good job on the X-Rigging Ring sling page I think.)

Those that are still in the business of products can not and should not fully disclose information about the ups and downs; due to the risk of ticking off a customer.

I will say this; it can be quite ruthless out there.

I will comment about the public though. I will re-read my draft of this and likely post it tomorrow.
 
Well, this does not read very good, but some of it might make sense:

I would say there is about maybe 15% of the public out there that gets outright negative about your product and try where they can to tear you down.
They are attackers (or haters) and haters can bring in “vultures”, as one experienced product person called them. “don’t feed the vultures by responding to them”, and experienced one told me.
Another experienced person told me that they think when it is a "tree guy" that brings a product to the industry, then there are a few other "tree guys" that look at that and think, "what the heck, he's just a tree guy like me, he can't be doing this". And they therefor “hate” the inventor.
One inventor person told me that they put so much into their product that money was so depleted and they almost lost their house. All the while, one guy in particular bashed the product everywhere he could. All over the internet, there was this one guy in particular that especially made fun of the product and he stood out way above the haters.
It got to the point where the inventor wanted to seek this person down and cause serious harm to this person. He was busy and didn't get around to it, but haters need to realize, when you continually bash a product, you are threatening someone's lively hood, which also means you are threatening their family and that is a big deal.

People that bash a product really should evaluate themselves and try to figure out why they are doing it. Try to understand how much people put into trying to make a product successful and back off it already. Even if you don’t like the person, you don’t need to bash the product, there are more people involved in the products than you think.
People do not suck (despite what the saying says). But there are definitely some that do and I think they truly just don’t know how intense this product stuff is and how many people it might involve and how taxing the cost can be.
 
While you make a good point David, I'll say this. An inventor must have a thick skin and be able to hear the good criticisms to identify the weaknesses in their products to develop it to the point that it's marketable. More often than not its really understanding who your market is. Will they continue to face criticism and product bashing? Sure, look at Ron Popeil's Hair in a Can

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GeF7A05zQ8

He made about $1.25 million from that. He's had about $2 Billion in sales from his and his father's inventions. How many of his products were ridiculed and the fodder for late night comedians and SNL skits like, The Bassomatic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQFv83QJ2Y
 
I agree totally. Luckily from being on a forum for many years, my skin is fairly thick. But There must be many products that cease to get going due to haters bashing the product and the person that introduces it can't deal with it. How many great products do we never see due to the inventor not having thick enough skin to see it through?

Similarly, I've seen plenty of tutorial videos that were just simply "okay" and the public tears them apart; where I doubt the editor will ever attempt to put time into another video. (having said that, I use to bash Daniels old tutorials, but that was because I truly did not agree with some of the things and I thought others would get hurt following the advice. When his videos got better, my comments did also).

I tend to forgive and actually forget who the haters are. I found that this is not smart when you have a PRODUCT you put out there, because THEY usually do not change and they will set you up for a fight or try to pull you in for vultures.

So when it comes to product related bashing, I wrote down a few names (4) that tend to create problems with the X-RRs. And sure enough, those same names keep stirring up trouble where they can. So I advise any newcomer to a new product to write down the names of those that tend to cause trouble with your product and stay away from them.

When it comes to personal dislike towards me, that's okay, it's not going to "hurt" anything (or it should not). So I don't worry about engaging in others that might not like me. If it's personal, that's okay.

I decided not to hide my personality and be falsely nice to everyone in order to maybe sell more of a product. If the product is truly a good tool, it should not be hurt by the few on a forum that don't like me personally.

I think it is more important to be real and more people will respect that anyway.
 
Like the product, the inventor has to morph and adapt. There will be haters and then there are those that are just trying to understand the product and if it will be a benefit and worth investing in. Whether that investment is the cost of one piece or the bankrolling of the whole venture, they will try to envision the upside and, the downside. For either if the upside potential is greater then, they will move forward.

This all comes back to knowing who your market is. New products need to appeal to the early adopters, those that are constantly looking for the next thing. Don't be fooled by their eagerness to acquire your invention. They are the ones that will take it and play with it and just as readily dump it as promote it to the broader markets of the early and late majority. The laggards (or haters) are not to be worried about as they will find something wrong with just about everything.

It's Darwinism applied to business, not only must your invention be fit enough to survive but, so does the inventor.

Here's an excellent article on the concepts of innovators and early adopters.

http://www.ideacouture.com/blog/innovation-early-adopters-beyond-the-bell-curve/
 
When someone is negative about something I am involved with or aware of I often think of something Benjamin Franklin said about a fish vender having ‘trouble’ giving away FREE fish at the end of his sales day. If your gonna have trouble giving something away FREE it isn’t surprising that there would be some challenges in peoples minds in every other area of fish commerce.

Love the insight into what an inventor comes up against. In talking to people I have gotten some of the flavor of that kind of thing. Unfortunately I absolutely think we have lost some good products and ideas to peoples enchantment for negativity. I have read so many examples of famous people that were told they were no good at something early on in their career. The famous operatic star who was told she had ‘no voice go home and take up sewing’ by a well know voice coach, Disney turned down by over 300 banks before one said yes, Col. Sanders got over 1,000 no’s before he sold his first Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe/deal. And more recently the authors who did the Chicken Soup For The Soul series of books tell of being turned down by countless publishers (I think there were 20 some no. one books in that series.)

The financial risk alone is disincentive enough. Encourage an inventive mind to pursue his/her passions. If this tool doesn’t exactly hit the mark for you, one or more of the next ten he puts out will.
 
Remember too though Edison, famed as an inventor said this, "My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others.... Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it."

Other quotes of his point to the very essence of this. http://www.thomasedison.com/quotes.html

Banks turning down those who in turn went on to succeed, singers told they couldn't sing, books being rejected by publishers, on and on. Yes, this happens and it will continue to happen. The dynamics of picking winners is so complex as to make it a veritable guessing game. Venture capitalists and the even more risk tolerant angel investors approach their investments with an attitude that only 1 in 10 will succeed. In other words, they are only going to pick a winner 10% of the time. And, that is out of hundreds that come across their desks.

BTW, Moby Dick was rejected, JK Rowling was also rejected. It's not how many times you are knocked down that counts but that you get up just one more than that. Persistence, not obstinance wins out. As Edison saw, brilliant but, misdirected. Make sure you can truly see who your market is and focus on them.

Bruce Cockburn put it brilliantly, "Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight."
 
Ahhhh...another Cockburn fan!

What is a false fork?

It's a head lesson to learn, ignoring haters/bullies. Feeding them any energy allows them to sustain themselves. Taking away attention is the easiest way to have them go away. Rise above don't stoop to their level

This is a great thread
 
Ahhhh...another Cockburn fan!

What is a false fork?

It's a head lesson to learn, ignoring haters/bullies. Feeding them any energy allows them to sustain themselves. Taking away attention is the easiest way to have them go away. Rise above don't stoop to their level

This is a great thread

Going back to "Barrelhouse" Saw him in concert at Massey Hall in Toronto around the time of Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws
 
Hi Tom !

It's a ring style friction saver.
Sorry for that i heard some guys saying it and i thought it was usual as we call it here a fausse fourche (wich means litteraly the same).

C'est obvious. Da French dey calls it da false fork ( fausse fourche) probably because dey are so much for da food eh? While de English dey calls it de false crotch. An yous can imagine for why.
 
Watched a great documentary on Netflix about a very early submarine named the Alligator. Was invented by a frenchman in France, ignored/rejected by that country. Inventor came to the States proposed his idea and built a model or some such which was personally viewed by President Lincoln and then commissioned to be built.


The inventor walked away from the project when it was half completed as a result of differences with the shipyard or something like that. It was completed and current sub engineers say it had some revolutionary features for its time, concepts still applicable today. Interesting point to me, and what the show marveled at, the guy was lost to history after that - he walked away from his dreams and was never heard from again. (Well that’s the way I think of it anyway.)
 
Well I have been wanting to craft a post for this thread since I heard that TreeStuff was trying out the waters of making rings/thimbles similar to David Driver’s X Rigging Rings. It turns out I had already summed up my point in November of 2013 in my first post of the thread.


I have been wanting to start this thread for some time and today I get to open it on a upbeat note.

Sherrill tree is now carrying X-Rigging Rings. They are the original, real deal XRR not some cheaply made knock off. They are giving David Driver his due for bringing them to our industry. Kudos to Sherrill tree for doing the right thing.

I think it is important for us in the industry to expect and demand that the credit and the profit potential for any invention or innovation goes to the developer of same. More on this to follow....


Sherrill has tried predatory behavior toward inventors and innovators in the past and if I understand correctly has decided that that type of behavior has run its course for them. Again if I understand correctly, they have a new CEO that is all about people and relationships and getting money the old, (very old) fashioned way, earning it. I look forward to going back and doing some business with Sherrill. My prediction is that leadership with a people centered focus will take Sherrill to the top of its game again in pretty short order.


TreeStuff is trying this out now and seeing how it works for them. Fine. As some have pointed out there is no law against it. Fine, see how it works.


My focus for this post is those of us in the arborist community, and distilling it down to the bottom line for us. I would love to talk Ideals, I would love to talk morals, I would love to talk about integrity. Lets go to dinner and talk those things some time.


For this post my bottom line is what will get us in the arb community the most in the long run. Every inventor and Innovator is watching and listening. They will directly respond to what we do. Lets vote with our dollars and reward both emotionally and financially the person who brought us the innovation or the new invention.


David is a person that I count as a friend since I went back and spent a couple of weeks learning XRR uses and other things from him. (So yes I am biased just in case you wondered.) He has named off some of the $ figures spent to make XRR orders happen etc.. He has described in various places some the the crane time, and man hours spent in testing various specific aspects of XRR use. And he has put untold heart and soul into getting this info into our hands. I love rigging with XRR’s as opposed to blocks. It makes it fun again and I have made much more money as a result of that fun being there for me. David Driver is the only reason I know about that. I wont forget it.


If David were to share here the $$$ he has put into propagating this information, if he added up the crane time and man hours and we assigned a realistic $ value to it, the numbers would be staggering in my opinion. Now take that no. and gather your family around the table and tell them that you want to spend that much money on getting a product and a way of doing things out into the arborist community because you really believe in it and because your believe that one day it will pay off. This is what David has done day in and day out for years now.

One inventor I know of who brought a single product to market enumerated a host of different things he could have bought for his family (new car, swimming pool etc.) and places he could have taken them had he not produced a product. That coupled with the grief he has experienced sharing it in forums and I highly suspect we will never see the next idea he told me about.


Another inventor that had brought one product to market and gone through quite a bit of grief in his sharing confided to me upon bringing his second product out that he had talked his wife into it based on the future returns and he told me about the hefty loan he took out. He said if this doesn't work out I think it could cost my marriage. That guy got huge grief on at least one forum and I have not seen info from him since.


And for all who love the idea if something is legal or not. I wish the inventor of the auto feed we all love on our chippers would post up his story. If I can recount it in the ballpark of correct all the major manufacturers were purchasing from him. Then they found ways of having them made cheeper overseas with slight variations and cut him out of the loop. He told me how many employees he had to let go, the house he lost and etc.. Believe me most of us would be crying the blues. Took one of the big mfg co. to court or they took him and he won. They legally have to pay him. Has not seen a dime and they have so much money that it would take untold $ to force them to pay as I understand it. Bottom line there, if you know the story and how fallible and weak the standard auto feed controllers (and remote controls) are compared to his, when yours blows up you can buy one from him and experience a durable unit. Other wise you are out of luck. Think we will see any more big industry changing products from him???


Emotional return on a product is as important or more important than a financial return to an inventor or innovator in my opinion. Lets not rob both the dollars and the value out of an effort or enterprise that a person has put heart and soul into for us. They are our inventors and innovators. They are striving to produce for us. I will repeat what I said before, “I think it is important for us in the industry to expect and demand that the credit and the profit potential for any invention or innovation goes to the developer of same.”
 

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